


i can hardly stand the sight of it all

by flatwoods



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Trans Gerard Keay, Trans Jonathan Sims, basically just assume everyone is trans. except elias i hate him too much, because what if i change my mind??, but mostly? i do what i want, he'd be marked by a lot of different entities and elias would take advantage of that, im justifying it because if gerry was still alive, this will almost definitely be jon/gerry im just not tagging it until we get there, yes this is a gerry as head archivist au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:02:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23635768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flatwoods/pseuds/flatwoods
Summary: Gerard Keay was in the middle of getting the eye tattoos on his left knuckles touched up when he remembered he was dying.Just as the tattoo artist closed a nigh-imperceptible gap in the iris of his ring finger—the last of the little faded blemishes that had accumulated in the years since he’d first got them—the knowledge that he had a brain tumor popped into his head as casually as if he were remembering a crush he’d had in middle school. It felt familiar, sort of nauseating, and in an upsetting way, weirdly funny.“Oh, fuck,” said Gerry, mostly because he didn’t know what else he could say.
Relationships: Gerard Keay & Jonathan Sims, Jonathan Sims & Tim Stoker, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims, Sasha James/Tim Stoker - Background
Comments: 97
Kudos: 227





	1. Chapter 1

Gerard Keay was in the middle of getting the eye tattoos on his left knuckles touched up when he remembered he was dying.

Just as the tattoo artist closed a nigh-imperceptible gap in the iris of his ring finger—the last of the little faded blemishes that had accumulated in the years since he’d first got them—the knowledge that he had a brain tumor popped into his head as casually as if he were remembering a crush he’d had in middle school. It felt familiar, sort of nauseating, and in an upsetting way, weirdly funny.

“Oh, fuck,” said Gerry, mostly because he didn’t know what else he could say. 

He felt lightheaded, and a little like he was about to throw up. He said it again, more panicky this time, and the tattoo artist looked up from scrutinizing his pinky and asked if he needed a minute. “I know how much getting your hands done can hurt,” she said sympathetically, and waggled her own inked fingers at him.

Gerry stared at her blankly, laughed once, and then promptly leaned over the side of his chair and threw up.

Within a week, he’d seen a doctor and had a diagnosis. Yes, a brain tumor. Completely operable. So lucky to have caught it so early.

Gerry knew the nurse that got him ready for surgery was allergic to chocolate, and that she was trying to quit vaping but kept finding herself buying disposables anyway, and that when she was fourteen she’d had an encounter with the Spiral that had left her permanently terrified of going to shopping malls alone. He also knew that both of her boyfriends wanted to go exclusive but she really didn’t want to pick between the two of them, but that wasn’t terrifying eldritch knowledge being beamed directly into his brain. She’d told him about that when he’d asked for her to please talk to him about anything other than what was about to happen to him until the drugs kicked in and he passed out.  
Maybe he didn’t much like the idea of handing over his body to a bunch of strangers, even if they were saving his life. Whatever. The nurse was nice, and Gerry told her that if she was going to break up with one of them, it should be Trevor, because “you can’t trust anyone who’s studied abroad in France to be normal.”

She laughed, and said something or other to him, and then he woke up alone and incredibly dizzy.

Gerry spent the next ten days in the hospital, at first mostly in a confused fog, then later in more of a confused light haze. Gertrude came by just once. Gerry couldn’t remember most of her visit, but he remembered bluntly asking if she knew he was going to die, and her bluntly saying back yes. He was pretty sure she apologized, but in a way that he knew meant ‘I’m sorry but I’m still right,’ and he was also pretty sure he’d yelled at her to never talk to him again and that a nurse had to come in and tell him to quiet down. The nurse wasn’t as nice as the one who’d been there before Gerry had gone into surgery, though, and Gerry knew that he’d broken up with his last girlfriend because she’d stopped shaving her legs, so he didn’t really care too much about the inconvenience.

Most people didn’t need a full ten days to recover in-hospital, but Gerry didn’t have anyone whose care he could be released into, so they kept him until he could be trusted to get back to his flat without passing out on the tube. He’d come out of surgery relatively unscathed—the impact on his nerves meant that he walked with a slight limp now, and would probably use a cane on and off for the rest of his life, but that was a small price to pay for having a life at all.

Gerry got back to his flat without passing out on the tube. For the next few weeks, he worked on and off to make the place more accessible as he slowly recovered. He started meal prepping, and reorganized his bathroom cabinet, and eventually took up knitting just to have something to do with his hands. He half-expected to start getting statement-sick; he wasn’t sure if he was technically considered an employee of the Magnus Institute or not. It wasn’t like he’d signed an employment form, but maybe working with Gertrude had tied him to the place anyway, and he wouldn’t be surprised if Elias had managed to get his name down as an archival assistant on record somewhere. The knowledge that kept popping into his brain worried him, but he also suspected that might be due to a more personal contract with the Eye, negotiated through tattoos and bloodlines instead of the Institute. Gertrude worried him, too—he didn’t know exactly why she hadn’t warned him about his tumor, but he knew what she was capable of, and he had some unsettling ideas. 

If she had been planning something, though, she apparently hadn’t initiated it before he left, because no illness ever came. Once he’d recovered enough to realize he wasn’t going to keel over at any moment, he resumed his previous occupation of selling Pinhole Books’ remaining rare stock on eBay. Two months later, he moved into a new building, adopted a cat, and started being “tall goth that lives on the third floor” instead of “motherfucker who sets off the fire alarm constantly and once forgot a burlap bag full of literal screaming books in the stairwell.” He kept knitting, splurged on some new kitchen appliances, and made the vague acquaintance of most of his neighbors—and he only unwillingly knew about some of their supernatural traumas. 

Two years later, he received a letter in the mail addressed to a _Mr. Gerard van Closen Keay._

Gerry was used to mostly mass-produced spam, letters that referred to him as “To Whom it May Concern,” or “Dear Sir,” or occasionally “Dear Madam” if their information was particularly out of date. He was not used to letters addressing him by a family name that he thought had died with his mother. _Dear Mr. Keay,_ the letter began, _I am writing to inform you of your promotion to Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute._

Gerard burned the letter in his wastepaper bin. Old habits die hard.

Then he got sick.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gerry makes a good first impression. Elias is Elias.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh man. i'm back. i deleted this entire chapter accidentally, and didn't get the energy to rewrite it for a bit, but here we are. have fun

Gerry walked into the Magnus Institute wearing five-inch platform boots, making him six feet and seven inches tall and liable to hit his head walking through doorways. 

He hadn’t been back in years, but the place felt nauseatingly familiar, like he’d never really left. Gerry wondered vaguely if Jonah Magnus had commissioned Robert Smirke to draw up the plans for the Institute, and if he’d requested Smirke retain the elements of his other designs: the too-low ceilings, the corridors at odd angles, the seemingly excessive stairways. The building felt uncomfortably like it was pulling him inwards. Elias’ office was easy to find; it sat on the third floor, at what Gerry knew must be just about the center of the building. Like a spider, sitting in the middle of its sprawling web—but no, Gerry was mixing metaphors. The Watcher might be just as sinister as the Web, but the Mother of Puppets had no place here. The Institute was a temple to the Eye alone.

Gerry tried to kick Elias’ office door in, but he stubbed his toe.

“Hello, Gerard,” said Elias when Gerry opened the door like a normal person would.

“I’m going to burn down this fucking place with you inside it,” Gerry said back.

“Uh,” said one of the four people that Gerry belatedly realized were also in Elias’ office.

The room was oversized, with Elias’ desk against the back wall. Maybe the effect was meant to be dramatic, but in practice it just made his small frame look even shorter compared to the high ceilings. Along one side of the room were two benches with a handful of people Gerry didn’t recognize, all in various stages of getting to their feet. That wasn’t great. Gerry knew he couldn’t actually kill Elias without the blood of everyone else in the Institute on his hands, but he was hoping he’d at least be able to break his nose or something; with four witnesses, though, he probably shouldn’t be committing serious assault and/or battery.

He raised one of his hands in an uncomfortable half-wave. One of them, a bigger guy in a knitted jumper, awkwardly waved back.

“Gerard,” Elias said again, “before we go over your new position, I wanted you to meet your archival assistants.”

“Fuck off,” Gerry replied automatically at the same time as the tallest of the four said “Wait, _this_ is the Head Archivist?”

“Tim!” Jumper guy elbowed the one who’d just spoken in the ribs. Tim elbowed him back. “No, I’m serious! Where’d this guy even come from?”

“Yeah, good question, Elias.” It was all Gerry could do to keep his voice even remotely level. “Where the hell did I come from? Shouldn’t one of these… lovely, qualified people be Archivist?” Gerry thrust an arm out towards the four. “Like, uh, glasses girl. Or sweatervest. They look like they’d love to curate your precious little collection.”

“Uh,” said sweatervest. Gerry ignored him.

“I’m looking for different qualifications.” Gerry glared at Elias. “Bullshit. What qualifications, you need someone who wants you dead?”

Elias shrugged. “If you like. Maybe I just want someone who knows what they’ll be working with inside and out.” Oh, Gerry did _not_ like the sound of that. 

“Elias, no. I’m saying no. Find someone else, because whatever it is you want, I will never fucking give it to you.”

Elias looked at him flatly, drummed his knuckles on his desk. It was oak, Gerry noticed. Expensive. So was his suit, probably. The Eye unhelpfully provided the price of Elias’ cufflinks, and the part of Gerry that wasn’t occupied by wanting to rip Elias to pieces wondered how the hell the Institute pulled in enough money to justify that kind of salary. 

“You’re free to walk out, Mr. Keay. It’s been a week since you were promoted—it doesn’t seem like you care too much about missing work.” Maybe it would be better if Elias was smirking like a cartoon villain, or if he was grinning something sharp-toothed and dark. It would be nice if he put any effort into looking as evil as he was. The look he gave Gerry was infuriatingly neutral. “Shame about that, by the way. How are you feeling?”

 _Bad._ Awful. He felt like he had in the moments before surgery—it wasn’t about the physical hurt, but it was bad like doomed, bad like he knew for a fact that he was about to die. He was weak and lightheaded, starving even, but really the pain was from something twisting in his gut, grasping up at his throat, something he could feel growing every day he stayed away from the Institute. Bad like he’d drank poison and he knew exactly where the antidote was: tucked between Artefact Storage and Research, sitting dusty on Gertrude’s labyrinth of shelves. Bad like there was a gun to his head. Bad like his mother had a ghostly hand wrapped around his neck again and there was absolutely fucking nothing he could do about it.

“I’ve had worse.” Gerry pulled down the collar of his T-shirt for emphasis, exposing the mottled burn still covering most of his body. _I can survive escape,_ he was trying to say. _I’ve seen worse than what you can throw at me._

Elias stared at him blandly, not bothering to look at the scar. “Then stay away, Archivist, if you think you can.”

Gerry knew he couldn’t.

But maybe Elias could be persuaded to let him go. “You sure you want that, then?” He stepped closer to the desk. Elias’s full height wasn’t much more than five and a half feet, even when standing, so Gerry towered over him. If he’d belonged to the Hunt, he’d be baring his teeth. “Maybe I can’t—”

 _Maybe I can’t kill you, but I can hurt you,_ is what he’d meant to say, but then he remembered there was still an audience, watching him and Elias go back and forth like a fucking soap opera. Gerry cut himself off and looked at the soon-to-be assistants, who were still staring at him from across the room. Tim was looking back and forth between them eagerly like he was watching a ping-pong match. Glasses girl—Sasha, he knew suddenly, Sasha James, thirty-two and already vastly overqualified—also looked entertained. Jumper guy was pressing away from him like he was trying to disappear into the wallpaper. Sweatervest looked like he was about to throw up.

Gerry still couldn’t figure out why Elias had them there. He wasn’t sure how much they knew, but he could bet it wasn’t much, and watching this conversation was absolutely going to bring up questions that Elias probably didn’t want them trying to answer. Was it some kind of threat, maybe? Would Elias hurt them if Gerry didn’t cooperate? But he hadn’t implied anything like that yet, and Gerry certainly hadn’t been cooperative so far. Elias barely seemed to notice they were there.

He looked back to Elias, waving a hand at them. “Just. Tell me you haven’t hired these poor idiots yet.”

“Uh,” said sweatervest, again. Gerry knew that last week he’d gone to a bar alone, gotten very drunk, and instinctively started riding the tube towards work instead of his flat. He hadn’t even realized his mistake until he was only five minutes from the Institute. Gerry ignored him, again.

Jumper guy spoke up in an anxious voice. “Mr. Bouchard had us sign the paperwork a few weeks ago, we, uh—technically haven’t started working yet, because you weren’t—you weren’t here, well, I guess you’d know that—” He coughed nervously, cutting his eyes to Elias. Elias didn’t meet his gaze, but kept his eyes locked on Gerry.

“No, come on. Elias.” Gerry swallowed heavily. “I mean, seriously. They don’t deserve this. And—what about the rest of Gertrude’s assistants? Michael, and Emma--”

“Oh, Gertrude’s assistants are no longer with the Institute.”

Fuck. They had been—well, he hadn’t seen them since he’d left, but they had sort of been Gerry’s friends once. Gertrude could be so ruthless—although maybe Elias had just killed them along with Gertrude? (And he knew Elias had killed Gertrude. He wasn’t sure if the knowledge was from the Beholding or not, but it felt so right. He couldn’t imagine anything else managing to take her out, least of all natural causes.) So they were there as a threat, then? A reminder of everything Elias could take from him? Proof that he could lose his friends—but they hadn’t been his for years, not really, and there honestly wasn’t anyone else that Elias could hold over him, so why—

“I thought you’d like meeting them,” Elias continued. “I mean, Gertrude always appreciated having a few spare hands around.” And, oh, there it was. 

They weren’t a threat. They were a gift. 

Elias thought of the assistants as a peace offering. They were sacrifices, not hostages. He assumed Gerry didn’t want the job because of its dangers, so he was giving him human shields. 

How thoughtful of him.

Gerry dug his nails into his palms, suddenly hating his tattoos, the thread of Beholding holding him and Elias together. “I don’t need them.”

“I’m truly sorry, Gerard,” Elias lied. “That’s not up to you. Employment is determined solely by the head of the Institute.”

“I’m not Gertrude.”

“No, I certainly hope you aren’t.”

Gerry could feel the walls closing in around him. “These people can’t _help_ me, Elias. I’m not going to—”

“I assure you, they’re all more than qualified. For whatever you might need them for.”

Gerry desperately motioned towards jumper guy. “He didn’t even graduate high school!” Jumper guy paled immediately and started making sounds of denial, which went entirely unheard. Tim put a hand on his shoulder.

“Neither did you,” Elias pointed out.

Gerry dropped his arm uselessly. He’d walked in trying to prove to Elias that he was wrong to choose Gerry as Head Archivist, but it had long since dawned on him that the position had become his the moment Gertrude Robinson died. He’d lost. He knew he’d lost. He never had ground to stand on to begin with. All his protests were starting to seem less like threats and negotiation and more like he was acting out for attention. At twenty-eight, Gerry found himself feeling like a troubled teen whining for mercy in the principal’s office.

He assumed. He’d never actually been to a principal’s office. 

And it wasn’t like Elias could expel him, could he?

“You know what? Fine. You win.”

Elias exhaled, dropping his shoulders slightly, releasing tension Gerry hadn’t even noticed he’d been holding. He brushed an invisible piece of lint off one of his suit cuffs. “Well. If you’re done being childish, then—”

“I’m your problem now.”

Before Elias could say anything, Gerry stepped forward, grabbed Elias by the hair, and slammed his face into his desk. Then he walked out of the office and into the Archives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if it's not clear yet, this is gonna be 10% plot, 80% shenanigans, 100% self-indulgence. next chapter is gonna be jon pov!
> 
> edit: wow, i really thought 10% and 80% added up to 100%, huh? the last 10% is idiocy 
> 
> thank you all so much for the comments on the last chapter omfg i really love yall sm


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim and Sasha might not have access to red string and a bulletin board, but they make do the best they can. Jon manages to make himself the asshole. Some rando is breaking into the Head Archivist's office.

Jon stared dully into the mug in his hands. Twenty minutes ago, he’d found out that his one shot at Head Archivist had gone to a seven-foot goth wearing fingerless fishnet gloves. Ten minutes ago, he’d watched said goth break his boss’ nose. Now he was sitting in on the breakroom couch holding a mug of tea that Martin Blackwood, apparent high school dropout, had anxiously started making the instant the assistants had frantically left Elias’ office. 

Correction: He’d watched his _boss_ break his other boss’ nose. And possibly permanently stain his desk. With blood.

“My life is over,” Jon said into his tea. The tea did not say anything back.

The breakroom was a cramped little space, one that Jon had never bothered to spend much time in. It had a couch that had clearly come from a charity shop, a small table with a few mismatched chairs, a clock that always ran two minutes late, and a tiny joke of a kitchenette. In Jon’s mind, it was a place to keep a lunch if he’d decided to bother with bringing one and not much else. Tim and Sasha, though, evidently thought of it as a home base of sorts and had dragged the other two assistants with them after the four had hastily left Elias’ office.

Tim was pacing around the room’s meager perimeter, eagerly theorizing about every completely unhinged thing they’d just heard. Sasha was going back and forth with him as she wrote on sticky notes at lightning speed and stuck them on the table, turning it into an impromptu conspiracy web. Martin, still standing by the kettle, was alternating between interjecting into their ramblings and looking like he was maybe on the verge of a panic attack.

“Jon, what do _you_ think?” Tim asked, who seemed to have just remember that Jon existed. 

“I think I spent years of my life getting multiple degrees and I decided to waste them becoming a ghost secretary,” Jon said, maybe to Tim, maybe to the tea. Didn’t really matter which. Neither was listening to him.

Tim sunk down next to him on the couch, which groaned in protest. He looked at Jon very seriously and put a broad hand on his shoulder. “I say he’s Elias’ illegitimate son. Sasha’s ex-lover thing doesn’t make any sense. The age gap is weird even for Elias, I bet, and I don’t think he’d go for, y’know, the alternative look.”

“Tim, my resume is a complete joke at this point. Who’s even going to hire me, coming out of the Magnus Institute?”

“And son makes sense, if Elias wants him to take over the Institute after he bites it. Plus, like, if one of my weird exes told me out of nowhere I’d been hired, I wouldn’t show up at all, I’d just get a restraining order. Only an estranged dad has that kind of pull.”

“Christ, I might have to go back to graduate school. Get credentialed for something useful.” Tim rolled his eyes and stood back up, the couch creaking again. “Jon, you’re no help.”

Jon shrugged in acknowledgement and took a sip of his tea, which wasn’t great. He was fully aware that everyone immediately assumed he was a workaholic academic with little time for frivolities, which was mostly fine, except everyone also assumed workaholic academics took their tea in a no-nonsense, bitter fashion. Jon liked to drown any hint of actual flavor in sugar and cream. Martin had given him a very reasonable Earl Grey with one sugar, which in Jon’s opinion just tasted like hot leaf water.

It also wasn’t great because he was drinking it while grappling with the realization that he now had to either do academic grunt work under a violent maniac or do academic grunt work as a broke grad student with no prospects. Existential dread tended to pair better with chamomile.

Distantly, Jon realized that Tim was still talking. “Maybe Elias is, like, holding his inheritance over his head?” He whipped around and pointed a finger in Jon’s face. “Maybe Elias is secretly a billionaire!” 

“Oh, that actually might make some sense. That would explain where all our funding is going, since it’s not as if researchers are well-paid.”

Tim blinked at Jon. “I didn’t think you were actually listening!”

“I didn’t think you had anything to say worth replying to.” 

Tim laughed, because he was one of the few people in the Institute who found Jon funny instead of insufferable. Jon, for the record, was not one of those people. (He couldn’t wrap his head around why Tim had insistently befriended him when he first joined Research. Sasha insisted Tim had started off flirting with Jon before realizing he genuinely enjoyed his platonic company, which did admittedly make some sense.)

“Jon, you say that now, but when I find our new boss’ birth certificate stashed in Elias’ desk—”

“Tim!” Sasha interrupted, waving her phone in the air. When Jon wasn’t looking, she’d taken off her blazer, rolled up her sleeves, and—he wasn’t quite sure how he’d missed the smell of it—she’d lit an extremely rule-breaking cigarette and was dangling it from her fingertips. If her dreads weren’t pinned back so neatly, she would look like a full-on mad scientist. 

“Katie from Artefact Storage texted, and she says she definitely remembers the name Keay from Gertrude’s days, but she thought Keay was an older lady. I bet you’re right with the son theory!” 

Tim jumped off the couch, grabbed the hand that Sasha still had wrapped around her phone, and eagerly scanned the screen. He squinted at it for half a second before letting go of her wrist. “Martin, come look at this!”

Martin, who Jon had mostly forgotten was still hovering by the kettle, started. “Look at what now?”

“The irrefutable proof that our new boss is a bastard lovechild! Everything fits!” Martin was already shaking his head. “I don’t think so, I mean, Keay’s not that weird of a last name, is it?” (“It totally is,” Sasha muttered under her breath.) He let out a half-chuckle. “Plus, I was pretty sure Elias was gay. I mean, no reason in particular, I just get the sense?” 

Tim nodded like Martin had just said something extremely sage. “Hm. Entirely possible. Likely, one could even say.”

“I, uh, I would say that.” Martin looked over at Jon. “I dunno, what do you think?”

Jon was planning to say _I think the idea that Elias would hand off the Head Archivist position to the rebellious secret goth offspring of a heterosexual affair is completely insane, but I can’t think of any other scenario that answers any of what we just saw, even if it doesn’t explain why said offspring apparently can’t just quit or why he doesn’t want us as assistants or all that weird cryptic stuff about how he’s ‘had worse’ or why he started showing off his freaky burn scar,_ but instead his mouth said something entirely different and incredibly stupid, which was “You didn’t graduate high school?”

Martin nearly dropped his mug.

“Christ, I forgot about that, what with the, uh, everything.” He set his tea on the counter and leaned against it shakily, raking a hand through his hair. Jon wished he could smack himself. Yes, it was surprising, but not the kind of thing he should be bringing up _right now._

Still, though, if it was anyone, it made sense that it was Martin. Jon didn’t know the man well, but he’d seen his work. It wasn’t sloppy, per se, but in hindsight it was clear that he was just sort of watching and copying what everyone else did. And any project with him on it seemed to universally take weeks longer than it should, and he was always walking around checking up on people and making them tea and asking about their days instead of doing literally anything work-related, and also he’d walked into Jon and dropped a box of files on his foot once.

“God, I’m—I’m probably fired, aren’t I?”

Jon made a noncommittal noise.

Tim snorted. “Like hell you are. If Gerald or whoever can walk around committing assault, they’re not gonna kick you for missing a piece of paper.” 

Martin’s mouth twitched. “Three pieces of paper.”

“Oh, that’s right, I forgot. The masters.'”

“The masters’,” Martin repeated miserably, pulling a chair up beside the table and sitting down. “I didn’t even really need one to work here! What’d I go and do that for!”

Tim wandered over and patted his shoulder vaguely. “Martin, I promise that if no one cared before, no one cares now. I mean, honestly, I wasn’t mad when you told me, just impressed. Who else can fake it ‘till they make it for half a decade?”

Martin dropped his head onto the table and groaned. The image looked unsettlingly like Elias right after his face had been smashed in. “I don’t even care if our boss is an evil freak. I don’t want to go back to working under the table. I’m never pretending to be someone’s son again.”

“You’ve pretended to be someone’s son?” Tim asked.

“Tim knew you were lying?” Jon asked at the same time.

“Yeah, Tim’s known for years now. And child labor laws are different if it’s your own kid,” Martin replied without lifting his head off the table.

Jon frowned. “Why’d you tell him? No offense, but Tim is… Tim’s a gossip.” 

Tim made a sound somewhere between a cough and a laugh. “None taken, and he—” Tim grinned and turned towards Martin, who still had his head on the table. “Look, I’m not gonna tell him if you don’t want me to.”

“No, it’s fine, it’s just—embarrassing.” Martin finally looked up, scrubbing his hands over his face. “I, um, forgot to change my age in my Tinder bio before I started work. And Tim found it like a week in. Said he figured either I’d been a child prodigy—”

“Or he was lying about his degree,” Tim finished.

Jon stared incredulously at Martin. “You—you lied about nearly a decade of school but you didn’t change your age on a dating app?”

“Oh, Martin was hardly using it for _dating,_ ” Tim said smugly. Martin whacked him on the arm. “Tim, besides the point! And I hadn’t used it in ages! I forgot about it!”

Tim winked at him. “Responded to my message awful fast for someone who ‘forgot,’ Marto.”

“I hope the new archivist fires you first.”

Tim stuck his tongue out. Jon was still staring at Martin. “It’s a miracle you’ve lasted this long.”

“Hey, I’ve done all right,” Martin said defensively. “Not like you knew.”

“Well, I would if I’d been paying attention!” Some small part of Jon was aware that he really should shut up, but a much larger part of him still had its jaw on the floor. It was one thing to have lied his way into the job, but to do it so carelessly—had anyone even checked his CV? Did no one Google him _once?_ “It should have been blatantly obvious to anyone who’d bothered to look! I mean, you're never up to standard, your grasp on—on practically everything is tenuous at best, I mean—God, who doesn’t know how to even cite things properly?”

“People who couldn't afford to just drop work and go to Oxford, okay?” Martin snapped. 

Jon shut up.

Martin opened his mouth like he was going to say something more, but quickly closed it and pointedly looked away from Jon, fixing his gaze on the sticky notes dotting the table. Great. So, in a conversation with a man who’d scammed his way into a career, Jon had still managed make himself the asshole.

The room was dead silent save for the quiet electric buzz of the office fridge. Tim coughed uncomfortably.

Before Jon could even start to dislodge his foot from the back of his throat, Sasha let out a sharp “oh!” For a moment, Jon was afraid she was going to start in on him, but it quickly became obvious that she hadn’t been paying them any attention. 

“Okay, okay, Robin from accounts just texted me asking if I knew who the ‘rando trying to break into the Head Archivist’s office’ was. Breaking into the office!” 

She tossed the phone at Tim, who looked both relieved that something had broken the tension and genuinely enthused by what she’d said. “Sash, we _have_ to get down there.” Sasha nodded in agreement like Tim had said something reasonable instead of an absolutely manic proposal to go interrogate an unstable criminal. 

“You can’t be serious.” Tim glared flatly at Jon, who remembered that he was still, at least for the moment, a rude jerk who probably wouldn’t be listened to. He tried anyway. “He’s—he’s dangerous, he’s _aggressive—_ ”

Tim waved a hand dismissively. “Whatever, not to us, I bet. Who hasn’t wanted to punch Elias a little?”

“I haven’t,” Jon said weakly, even though it wasn’t true. His budget decisions were rage-inducing. 

“Well, that just makes you a bootlicker.” Tim started to follow Sasha, who had already grabbed a pen and notepad and was headed out the door. “Coming, Martin?”

Martin shook his head. “God, no. You can go have fun getting your face broken, though.”

“Oh, c’mon, _Martin._ ” 

Martin shook off Tim’s wheedling, twisting his hands together on the table in front of him. “This is such a ridiculously bad idea. We should—we should probably all just quit right now, honestly—”

Tim cut him off with a laugh. “Never mind! I’ll just text you what we find out.” The door swung shut behind him, muffling the sound of him and Sasha excitedly strategizing.

Leaving Jon alone with Martin.

Martin, who Jon had just been incredibly mean to, and who was apparently the only other sane person working in the Archives. 

Jon knew he was an abrasive person at best and an intolerable one at worst. That wasn’t typically what he would consider a problem. If people didn’t like him, he usually didn’t like them back, and they could just stay out of each other’s way. But now he was stuck with the same three people in the same stupid, awful scenario, and Martin was shaping up to be the only one that he could trust to not to endanger the status of their extremely precautious situation.

That would all go away if Jon quit, of course, but he really, really, _really_ didn’t want to go back to grad school. 

So he should probably try to rebuild his bridges.

Martin was studiously ignoring him, and had traded out locking his eyes on the table for locking them on his phone. Should Jon clear his throat to get his attention? No, that would just make him look like a pretentious prick. He started to get up to sit at the table across from Martin, but—that would be weird, and too patronizing—and he quickly sat back down. 

Before he could think of how to best initiate an apology of some kind, the sound of him shifting on the couch made Martin glance over. From the look on his face, Jon could tell Martin knew he’d been staring at him, which was less than ideal. Well. Now or never, Jon supposed.

“I, uh. Um,” he started eloquently.

Martin narrowed his eyes at him, not angrily, but definitely suspiciously.

“I'm sorry, I shouldn't have..." Jon trailed off. Martin was already starting to turn away, his voice flat. "Sure."

"I tell people I’m thirty-seven,” Jon said, before he could think better of it. Martin twisted in his chair a bit to angle towards him, eyebrows knit together in confusion. 

“…Okay?”

“I’m twenty-seven. I just act like such an old man that it’s easier to let people think I’m a decade older than I am.”

Martin’s blunt silence indicated he was clearly still not following and also clearly thinking that Jon had lost his fucking mind. 

Jon huffed in frustration, raking his hands through his hair. “I’m trying to say there are—there are way more stupid things someone can lie about, than, than a—a resume.” 

Martin kept staring. The refrigerator buzzed. Slowly, he cracked a half-smile.

“So… your solution to suspecting that people think you’re old was to make _sure_ they think you’re old?”

Jon felt a surprising wave of relief. He hadn’t realized he was this invested in making sure Martin didn’t hate him. “Well, I mean. If you put it like that, it sounds…”

“Ridiculous?” Martin offered.

“I was going to say—no, no, you’re right.” He sighed. “It’s ridiculous.”

Martin let out a light laugh. “You shouldn’t have told me that. I’ll tell Tim, and he’ll tell everyone.”

Oh, Tim would tease him _mercilessly_ about it. “Please don’t?”

Martin didn’t say anything, just raised an eyebrow. _As if you have any ground to bargain with,_ the look seemed to say. “Okay. Okay, fair.” He leaned back into the couch and tried not to groan. “God, he’s going to be annoying about it.”

Martin laughed again. “What’s he gonna do? There’s not much to make fun of besides the fact that you, you know, thought that was a good idea.”

“Oh, Tim will find something, trust me.”

“Hm.” Martin fell silent for a moment, but there was no tension to the quiet this time. “Yeah, yeah he could.”

Jon prickled a little. “What’s that supposed to mean, exactly?” 

“Nothing, nothing! Just…” Martin was completely failing to keep the amusement out of his voice. “You’re in your twenties but you use a wallet phone case?”

“I—yes? It’s practical.”

“You’re in your twenties, but I know I’ve heard you say the phrase ‘my god’ in real life.”

“Okay—Martin—”

“You’re in your twenties but you use voice-to-text!” Martin’s voice cracked with laughter, and as much as Jon felt like he should be offended, he huffed out a quiet laugh too.

“All right, I get it, I’m awful!” Martin put his hands up in a mock gesture of surrender, still looking much too pleased with himself for Jon’s liking. Still, though, Jon was privately grateful Martin had picked at his mannerisms and not his graying hair. He’d come to terms with the fact that he acted like he was at least middle-aged ages ago, but he didn’t really want to admit to himself that he probably looked it too.

Another pause settled over the room. 

“…Do you think you’re going to stay?” Martin asked quietly.

Jon leaned against the arm of the couch, suddenly overwhelmingly tired. “Yes. I—I don’t know what else I would do, I guess.” It’s shorter than what he could say, which was _I’ve spent my life searching for any explanation for the horrible things that I know for a fact are out there, and I’d be the world’s biggest coward if watching a child get devoured by a giant spider couldn’t turn me away but watching a man get hit in the face could,_ but it wasn’t any less honest. He truly didn’t know what else he’d do. This was just his life now. 

Strange how fast he’d accepted that.

Martin sat with that answer for a minute, letting his gaze roam around the room. “Yeah. Yeah, me too. I…” He shook his head and laughed to himself softly. “Every time I think about quitting, some part of me just says no. I, I mean, I’m curious. I must be.” Jon could tell Martin wasn’t talking to him anymore, but was simply reasoning out loud. Rationalizing.

He looked back at Jon. “You know… Tim and Sasha still haven’t texted.”

Jon swallowed past a lump in his throat. “Fuck.”

Martin was nervously worrying a hangnail. “They’re probably not—I mean, it’s can’t be anything too bad—I mean, they’re both tough people—oh, we have to go after them, don’t we."

Jon gripped the arm of the couch for a moment before getting to his feet and dragging himself towards the door. "I'm pretty sure we do."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh god. i am so sorry i dont know why this chapter took so long for me to write. i dont even like looking at it i JUST want it done. updates are gonna be weekly after this okay
> 
> thank you all for the amazing comments on the last chapter :') idk if me replying to most of them is annoying i just want yall to know how much i appreciate them

**Author's Note:**

> oh gerry we're really in it now. title is from the mother mother song "the stand"
> 
> i have not written. fic. in ages. please be nice to me
> 
> and please please comment!!! thanks for reading i love you


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